


Roy's DCU Free For All Ficlets

by Merfilly



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several scenes from Roy's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roy's DCU Free For All Ficlets

He could barely see, could hardly catch his breath. This was...unbelievably good, taking away all the bad things in his life and giving him reason to fly high, soaring above it all.

He closed his eyes, feeling the rush of his blood, hearing the harsh sound of his breathing, and let his hands close in the hair of his partner, his teacher. Her encouraging words made no sense in his brain, but the surge of _now_ was unmistakable, and he let go fully.

As Bonnie left him laying there, sated and half passed out, she smiled to know just how much more a man her former lover's ward was now, because of her.

* * *

Roy watched the parade, safely hidden among the spectators, as New York honored the Teen Titans. They deserved it, had made the city safe again. He was glad to see Dick up there, smiling and enduring the public eye, safely out of the shadows.

He had to leave before the end of it, to make a much smaller ceremony. As he stood in uniform and they gave him a citation for the valor of his recent efforts, the government agent thanked Dick in his head.

He never would've been half as good without his best friend to show the way.

* * *

This wasn't supposed to happen. He stared at her over the barrel of his gun, and she looked at him over hers. 

They'd been lovers, and Roy had knowingly tried to shield her from the fallout of her decisions. She still hated him for lying to her.

And now, on orders, his sole mission was to bring her in.

"Shoot me, Roy. Pull the trigger." Her eyes glittered with malice. "Do so, and you'll never know a thing about your daughter."

His hands shook, and his focus turned to her words, not her.

When he came to, after she had overpowered him in his distraction, he knew he couldn't let his job keep him from finding the truth.

* * *

When they had first toyed with a relationship, they'd both been little more than kids. She'd been everything a girl could possibly be, a true wonder in more than her name. He'd been the cocky, self-sure picture of bravado and charm.

Now, him with a child, and her with a family lost to death, shadows mar the union of their souls.

They're looking for the innocence of the past, hoping to bury their pains in each other.

Desperate, clinging kisses and frenzied lovemakings can't make time turn back, though, and they both fall deeper into the shadows surrounding them.

* * *

"Now..."

"No, Roy."

"Please..."

"No, Roy."

A few more minutes of torturously slow strokes, a shift of the one performing them to better catch the angle, and Roy's patience was lost again.

"Please..."

"No! Now be good, and wait for it!"

The redhead kept his eyes closed, straining to be as good as was expected of him, but oh he was so excited! He'd asked for this, begged for it, even, and now it was on the verge of being his.

"Now, Roy."

He opened his eyes, breath exploding from him in a gasp as he saw the finished painting from Joe, while Dick smirked at him.

His Lian, captured as an infant, shading into Lian the child, and then into Lian the young hero she'd become...all in Joe's style.

"It's gorgeous..."

[Thank you,] the painter signed at him, letting him view the painting from a distance, so the paint could set.

* * *

Roy did not want to tell her.

Lian was his soul, his heart.

How could tell her what the woman that had given birth to her had done? How could he explain that horror, when it was still tearing him apart?

He looked at the child, so much more like Jade now, her red hair long since gone, and knew he could not let her learn any other way.

"Lian, baby, come here," he said softly, and prepared to tell how her mother blew up a city. It was not easy, but Roy's life had never been easy at all.

* * *

It might have been one of the hardest things he'd ever faced. Roy swallowed hard, pulled his hand over his face in a 'what am I supposed to do' maneuver, and steadfastly walked into the room. Only one person remained in it now, looking up at him with eyes that could cut right through him.

"You know I have to do this, right?" he asked her, keeping his voice steady, a little gruff with the firmness of will he did not truly feel.

"Yes," she said, so softly.

As he told her she was grounded, he wondered how he could go through with it, but he had to. He had to make her understand she couldn't break the rules like that. The whole moral of the story was that you got punished for doing bad.

So why, when Roy stuck to this punishment for breaking the same rule about fighting three days running, did he feel like crying his heart out while his daughter merely endured it with stubborn grace?

* * *

"Let me go."

His jaw firmed, and she moved closer, nails carefully not on his skin, but pressed closer than she really should be allowed to.

"Do you want to bring her to another prison?"

The man clenched his hand around his bow.

"được yêu mến," she began.

"No, Jade. You know why." He finally looked in her eyes. "Will you leave our daughter in other's hands by scratching me?"

They could hear the others coming, and Jade's shoulder's slumped. Very gently, she stroked his face one last time, and held her hands out, so that he could bind them.

* * *

It had been a hard week since the public identity memorial. Dinah had not yet gone home to Seattle, Lian was actively wondering if Grandpa Ollie was anything like Superman, and Roy was trying to walk the line between guilt and grief while putting forth a harder face for everyone else.

Nights, once Lian was in bed, often found Dinah curled up on the couch, feet tucked under her, a mug of tea in her hands, and staring blankly at the television.

Roy often wound up having to coax her to bed, and tonight was going to be no different. She'd mentioned going back to Seattle earlier, then shook her head when she saw Roy tense.

He almost thought she'd stay forever...and that made him feel a pang of wistful longing. He started to ask her as he pulled her to her feet, having already set the mug down for her, but he couldn't make himself. She was so tiny, trying to find her center, and it was so apparent as she pressed her hand to his chest and rubbed her cheek to his when she went up on tiptoes.

She was lonely...lost by her friends, or left behind by their deaths. He hated it, didn't like the lost, haunted shadows in her eyes.

He'd been there before, not having anywhere or one to turn to.

"Di...I..." He wanted to ask her to stay, to tell her he would be there, that they could be alright, if she would just let him...

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah looked up into the eyes of the one man left to her that truly held her entire heart in his hands. The conflict of emotion and desires roiling there made her pulse quicken, and she felt everything about the way the two of them push fully past their past as woman and boy. It had been building ever since word of Ollie's death hit them, that he was truly a man in his own right now...and she teetered on the edge of more.

There was, however, one thing that Dinah knew better than fighting. And that subject was Roy Harper's psyche. 

If she let grief carry them into something new, something more...it would be love, but Roy would eventually see himself as having just been a convenient substitute for her dead lover. And right now, she knew she really wasn't capable of honestly telling how much of the clinging to Roy wasn't part of grieving for Ollie.

"...shh, Boy-o," Dinah murmured, kissing him chastely on the cheek. "I'm okay. But I think we both need to try and move on to our normal lives," she told him gently. She then rested her head on his chest. "Maybe in the morning..."

`~`~`~`~`

Roy swallowed hard, disappointment warring with a desire to just once push past his immediate need to back off. He then forced a smile, and nodded. "In the morning then." He shifted to walk her to bed, and felt her snug into his side as if nothing awkward had passed. And really...that was probably the best way to go.

* * *

Roy Harper never had learned to deal with death well. His happy, go-lucky appearance always grew a little more rough and forced, but few saw him grieve.

The night after Lilith and Donna died was no exception. He stayed with his friends as long as he could, but their grief-sharing drove him away, out under the night sky.

Death was the fate of all creatures, he knew. Even Vandal Savage would one day be brought down by it...somehow. But, knowing how hard they had all fought and paid for their choices, it seemed cosmically cruel that the heroes had not been able to transcend such mortal fates.

He looked to the stars, finding the patterns of his childhood, and called out once.

"WHY?!"

* * *

Once, Roy thought about using his resources as an agent to find out more about his childhood. How had he come to be in the sole custody of a park ranger. His birth certificate had a name on it, but that was it. A name of a woman that Roy absolutely could not remember.

Brave Bow had never had any answers for him, and never offered him up to the women of the village. It took a long, painful week of recovery on a near stranger's floor and bed to finally have the comfort of knowing a mother's love.

And it was knowing Dinah, as that nurturing spirit in his life, that made him turn his thoughts away from learning just who had given birth to him as more than a name.

* * *

Roy had flat out laughed at Ollie's plan to become mayor. That it had a hysterical note in it was not lost on the senior Arrow. Ollie let the matter fall, and set about getting his one time ward stinking drunk so he might figure out what it was that edged Roy's reaction.

When Roy was very loose-lipped, Ollie mentioned his plan of becoming mayor and running as Green Arrow carefully again.

"Ne'er work. Get your ass fried. Don' b'lieve me? Go talk to Robbie. He'd tell ya. Maybe. Son'bitch went got himself a civilian job with a badge. Still runnin' as 'Wing. Made him worse than his name, all things..."

Ollie let it go then, knowing just where Roy was coming from.

* * *

One solid leap, and he caught the rung of the fire escape that was trapped shut by rust and misuse. A hard push of his body and he was going up the outer pathway as quick as he could, cursing in his head that he was not the runner on the damn team.

He vaulted up onto the roof, and unslung the bow in the same move, fearing ambush.

His prey was one building over, and he cursed again, moving to get a better sight between the ventilators.

Then she was in his sight, in the air, between two buildings.

He didn't have to think, knew just how much wind he had, how much momentum she was using, how much the connection of his net would both add and subtract to her movement.

He fired, the tip expanding into the bolo-net, wrapping around her at the mid point of her jump. She fell heavily on the next rooftop, trapped by him. He was soon there, at a slightly slower pace, glaring down at the woman.

"I hate running that much!"

* * *

Watching her fight had given Roy a new appreciation of her ability. He knew at a gut level that Black Canary was good, but actually teaming with her and Hal showed him just how good she was. 

In fact, it sometimes puzzled him just how intense she fought, why she had gone away and come back as a living weapon.

Until the night he overheard her and Hal talking in low tones, with her asking Hal if it was enough. He froze, heard Hal reassure her that they were trying, that they would make amends for all they'd done wrong then.

Dinah's immediate reply that they could never right the wrong they had created did more to restore her in Roy's eyes than any other moment.

* * *

He had no idea how long Jericho had been back before he finally headed down the state to see him. Joe wasn't judging, but Roy felt the guilt anyway. There had been a time when he called Joe a good friend, someone he'd do damn near anything for.

A lot of his responsibility toward Rose had been in Joe's memory. Yet now Roy felt like he had failed both of them, with all they'd been through.

Roy felt awkward and at a loss for words, his fingers fumbling in the sign he had picked up for Joe's sake as they visited. Finally, Joe moved to his side, caught his hands, stilling them by pushing them into Roy's lap.

[It's okay. I came back, things have been busy. But you're here now. Stop blaming yourself.]

Roy nodded once, and didn't protest when Joe drug him down to the music room. Maybe he had found one friend back in the wreckage of it all.

* * *

For the first time in a very long time, Roy felt at peace with himself, with the world, with his past. He had to admit that even if it wasn't the desert and sweat lodges and such, it was still therapy of the best sort.

One one side of him, Joe smiled, seeing Roy wake with that peaceful calm in every muscle. On the other, Raven still slept, having dream-walked with the troubled archer following their gentle session of massage and other touches.

Roy decided he liked being right there, and burrowed into the taller man's arm for a little more of it.

* * *

Roy blinked and yawned, staring at the same three screens for the third time that night until they tried to interlace into one image.

He really wasn't sure how he was going to survive three more hours of Monitor Duty at this rate.

"Boy-o...want company?" came a warm, honeyed voice that melted his fatigue away instantly. It was further aided by the smell of chili, and he turned with a smile. 

"How can a boy resist such an offer, Di?" he teased her, scooting over in the over-sized chair so she could share the chili, and his space, against the chill of the monitor womb.

* * *

Kendra purred softly as Roy lightly stroked out the feathers that had gotten crimped in the fight. He still had his gloves on, keeping the skin oil off of them, but it felt good, the way he tended to each feather in turn, straightening it. The harness let her be aware of them and feel them, but usually it was for fighting and flight, not this slow sensual caressing.

She supposed she could have taken the harness off, and both of them worked on it, but this...this was one of those moments she would not have missed for anything.

* * *

"I don't see why I have to read it!" Lian snapped, torn to tears almost by juggling her classes with her training...and knowing her dad insisted classes came first.

Roy struggled to frame his answer. He hadn't been a model student, and had only gotten a G.E.D. to qualify to work for the government.

"Think of it as a study in what human behavior can be like...and maybe it will help you with your training down in Gotham."

Lian eyed the billion page epic again, glared at her father one more time, and then tackled it. He better be telling the truth was all the glare said.

* * *

Roy hurried Cerdian down into medical, ignoring confused calls of 'what happened' from everyone.

"Raven, I've got an emergency here!" he shouted, and was joined by the much calmer empath. She took in the quarrel sticking out of the teenager's shoulder, the very icy presence of Lian Harper following, and barely refrained from scolding Roy Harper about being every daughter's worst nightmare.

Garth, she was sure, would be sure to find out just how his son had managed to get punctured, minor as it was, by one of Roy's bolts when the teens were supposed to have had a date that night.

"I'm real sorry, Lian," Roy whispered. "I really did think the safety was on..."


End file.
